


We Are Not Friends

by viridianmasquerade



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Bittersweet, Comfort, Friendship, M/M, Pale or red, Pre-Sburb/Sgrub, Sad, Stoner Gamzee, you can read it either way
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-22
Updated: 2014-04-22
Packaged: 2018-01-20 08:35:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,260
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1503857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/viridianmasquerade/pseuds/viridianmasquerade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eridan hates Gamzee, except when Gamzee is too pathetic to loathe.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We Are Not Friends

Eridan scanned the shoreline with a sneer, looking for signs of suspicious landdweller activity. It had been a long night of hunting lusii and he was tired; regardless, his vigilant campaign against landdwellers and their habit of littering beaches with complete rubbish could not falter for even a second lest any of them get it into their finless skulls that it was acceptable behavior that would go unpunished.

Because it would not. Oh no.

He caught a flicker of movement out of the corner of his eye and leaned closer, thumbing up the zoom on Ahab’s Crosshairs. Oh. Gamzee. Had it been possible for his sneer to sneer any harder, it would have; sadly, even a seadweller’s lips can only curl so contemptuously, and Eridan was forced to settle for simply continuing to sneer.

Gamzee, in his personal opinion, was Public Enemy Number One when it came to trashing up the pristine beaches in Eridan’s territory. Eridan had tried just about everything he could think of to make him stop, but nothing seemed to penetrate that ridiculous mass of hair. 

Asking nicely didn’t work. Yelling at him didn’t work. Throwing things didn’t work. He’d just grin stupidly and offer Eridan a bottle of Faygo, no matter what Eridan did. The only thing that had had any effect had been threatening to tell his lusus, and that had not been the kind of effect Eridan had been looking for. 

He’d tried it once and only once. Gamzee had plunked down in the sand and stared at the ocean for five solid minutes, then turned back to Eridan. He’d asked him if he really thought he could find his Goatdad, and if he did, could he please send him home? He’d said it so softly, so matter-of-factly that even Eridan had winced. Worse still that he’d been talking to Gamzee from Seahorsedad’s back.

Of all the trolls he ever imagined himself having the least tinge of sympathy for, Gamzee was not among them. And yet in that moment, Eridan had found himself utterly unable to be cruel. He’d sent Seahorsedad away and sat on the sand with Gamzee until sunrise, watching the waves in silence.

He couldn’t say what had motivated him. The second daylight rose he’d fled, angry and confused for reasons he couldn’t articulate. Eridan had been avoiding Gamzee since then, and he’d meant to now, but he was too curious to turn away. 

Eridan couldn’t figure out what Gamzee was doing. He would walk a few steps, bend, do something with the sand that made his sylladex flash an eye-watering miasma of colors, then straighten up and repeat the same process all over again. There was no pattern to it; he wandered up and down the sand seemingly at random. 

Eridan couldn’t work it out, and then it clicked - sabotage! He was obviously planting garbage, deliberately, for sneaky landdweller reasons! Oh, this was the absolute last straw.

He swooped over on Seahorsedad and leapt down in front of the filthy clown, brandishing the Crosshairs aggresively. “An’ what exactly do you think you’re doin’ here?” he growled, rolling his eyes when Gamzee waved lazily in response

"Whoa, hey, bro!" Gamzee smiled obliviously. "I was all gettin’ to clean the litter up off this motherfuckin’ beach here, man."

Eridan looked suspiciously up the sand to where Gamzee had come from. There was, in fact, a dearth of rubbish, especially when compared to the beach Gamzee hadn’t wandered to yet.

"An’ why in the fuck would you be doin’ a thing like that?"

"Uh, hell," he scratched his forehead, looking away, "I don’t got what’s being any particular reason, dig?" He wandered down the beach a little and picked up some empty bottles, stuffing them colorfully in his sylladex.

Eridan put the Crosshairs away and followed Gamzee. “Answer me when I talk to you, landdweller!” he said with all the pompous bluster he could summon, “What possible reason could you have to clean up this beach now?”

"Like I said, man, all up and no particular motherfucking reason," he said serenely, still wandering down the beach. "Just seemed to be what kind of beautiful miracle needed to be done today, you know?"

Eridan narrowed his eyes. There had to be something else. “You know just as well as I do that miracles are magic and magic is fake as shit, Gam.” He grabbed Gamzee’s shoulder to turn him around. “So what’re you really doin’ here, huh? Is this some kind of landdweller plot to, to,” he frowned, unable to come up with a compelling reason why removing trash from a beach would be a landdweller plot for anything, “to clean this beach for suspicious fuckin’ reasons?”

Gamzee sighed, ducking his head. He mumbled something Eridan couldn’t hear over the sound of the waves.

"What was that? Come on, speak up."

"All got to figuring that maybe it was this motherfucking trash all over the whole place that’s what’s making Goatdad not come back."

Eridan bit his lip. Goatdad again. He felt a flutter of sympathy and crushed it angrily.

"And you were always bein’ like to yelling at me about it anyway so I all up and thought what’d make you happy too is cleaning up this sicknasty beach."

"You," Eridan hesitated, "you were tryin’a make me happy?" 

"Yeah, bro, cause we’re two guys what’s friends and all," Gamzee said.

"We are not fuckin’ friends,” he growled. Like he would ever be friends with landdweller filth! Landdweller filth that was going out of his way to do something for him, sort of. Landdweller filth that was alone and sad and that Eridan wanted to hug - no he did not. He tried to drown the impulse in disdain. 

"Oh, okay." Gamzee tilted his head at him and shrugged, seemingly unfazed. Eridan felt a stab of guilt anyway, the impulse to hug and comfort surfacing again. He was having trouble holding it under, despite himself. "But I’m all kinds of gonna get back to pickin’ up what’s left of the garbage here, cause I’m still thinking at it’d be the thing that’d make you smile." He turned and walked down the beach. "And Goatdad too maybe." 

Eridan wasn’t certain he was supposed to have heard that part. “Hey!”

Gamzee kept wandering, bending to grab something here and there.

"Hey!" Eridan ran to catch up to him. "Hey, fuckin’ wait, already."

Gamzee stood up, but didn’t turn around. Eridan grabbed his shoulder again and turned him, gently this time. Looking up into Gamzee’s face, with a half-smile that seemed like all he could muster right now, he said “you know what Gam, we fuckin’ are friends, okay man? We fuckin’ are.” Watched that dumb happy smile spread right there in front of him. 

Because who else did Eridan know that would go out of his way to clean up a whole stupid beach just to make him smile? And who the hell did Gamzee know that would go out of their way to do anything for him? They were more alike than Eridan cared to admit. 

He pulled Gamzee into a hug, felt himself tense because it was weird and unfamiliar and he almost pushed him away. But as Gamzee wrapped his arms around him, he relaxed into it and smiled. He felt okay. He felt calm. “You wanna hand finishin’ the beach?” he asked.

"Yeah bro, and we can maybe get to motherfuckin’ chilling after?" Gamzee asked hopefully.

"An’ we can chill after," Eridan agreed.

"Cool, man. Cool." And Eridan couldn’t help but smile.

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt fill for a tumblr anon.


End file.
